Monthly Archive for January, 2011

: January, 2011

My middle-school teacher Paul Wesche once told me that the word assume could be broken down to into three parts ass – u – me, as in – to assume is to make an ass out of you and me. The truth behind this clever wordplay was made abundantly clear in the article just published by U.S. News and World Report, America’s Safest Airlines.

Look, I know that everything associated with the word “airline” is out-of-control sexy, and that the fact that US airlines have completed a year of fatality-free flying is frustrating for journalists who see the airlines as a source of juicy news when they are

I could rest my case by writing that the article’s author, Hamooda Shami’s last venture into the world of air travel journalism resulted in America’s Meanest Airlines, but that would be too easy.

Anyway, in this latest endeavor to capitalize on the fact that airline articles are a search engine optimization jackpot on par with Bradgelina, U.S. News has produced an article based on the premise that by counting up airline safety incidents and dividing by the number of flights, the consumer can accurately gauge how safe is a specific airline. That this is nonsense is even implied in the article itself when Mr. Shami writes the incidents used in calculating this safety ranking “should be taken with a serious grain of salt.” Fourteen hundreds words on the subject is enough salt to season a lot of baloney, (Coincidence? I think not!) Nevertheless, as an aviation writer seeking to uphold the reputation of aviation writers everywhere, I feel compelled to point out that this article has holes of logic through which we could route the entire fleet of Airbus A380s.

If this weren’t caveat enough, the article then goes on to say that in doing the math Mr. Shami is going to include only those incidents in which the “airlines were at fault.” Say what? The National Transportation Safety Board employs upwards of 90 scientists and engineers to determine probable cause, but one reporter has read, digested and analyzed a year’s worth of airline incident reports and come away with 305 incidents in which he has determined fault lies with the airline? Fast work Mr. Shami! I’m exhausted at the very thought.

Even having excluded the “airline-blame-free incidents” from the calculus, he can’t resist the urge to tell us the details of some of them. Two American Airlines turbulence events and a Continental near-collision are described as Mr. Shami justifies American’s (7) and Continental’s (4) position on his list.

There, there, there, airline executives, I know you’re grimacing at my even mentioning these numbers but don’t get your shorts in a bunch. The safety ranking collapses under the weight of its own moronic conclusions. Have no fear for your reputations. If there’s anyone who should be worried, its the editors at U.S. News. They’ve risked the magazine’s well-established reputation for careful list making by attaching its name to this dreck.

My middle-school teacher Paul Wesche once told me that the word assume could be broken down to into three parts ass — u — me, as in – to assume is to make an ass out of you and me. The truth behind this clever wordplay was made abundantly clear in the article just published by U.S. News and World Report, America’s Safest Airlines … …

these are the kinds of phrases lavishly attached to the newspaper stories about the decompression on Qantas flight 670 on Tuesday. The Boeing 737 traveling from Adelaide to Melbourne was forced to make a rapid descent after losing cabin pressure at cruise altitude. …

Sure, the pilots wanted a rapid descent. The period of time that average healthy individuals can remain in a robust state at 36,000 feet is less than a minute, according to tables on the time of useful consciousness. Smokers, people with heart and other health problems may have even less time than that.…

What has not been reported in the flurry of wild-eyed coverage is just how frequently depressurization events occur. Several years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece on this subject focusing on two tragedies, Helios Flight 522 and the charter flight in which the golfer Payne Stewart was killed. Both the Helios Boeing 737 and Stewart’s Learjet were models with a history of depressurization troubles.…

Helios Flight 522 was flying from Cyprus to Prague on August 13, 2005. The escalation of a minor problem at take-off to major disaster could be attributed to the cockpit crew’s failure to put on oxygen masks at the first warning that the cabin was not pressurizing. Confused and quickly becoming mentally sluggish, the pilots succumbed to unconsciousness trying to diagnose the problem. With the plane on autopilot it flew on for more than two hours until finally running out of fuel, it crashed outside of Athens. One hundred and twenty one people died. …

Since the dawn of the jet age in 1959, there have been more than 3000 loss of pressurization events in United States alone according to a review of FAA statistics. The Helios disaster reinforced to pilots the necessity of donning oxygen masks before doing anything else and certainly before trying to determine the source of the problem.…

One takeaway from Qantas flight 670 comes from what one of the passengers told a reporter after the plane landed. The young woman said that when the oxygen mask dropped she had no idea what to do with it. Those of you reading this post over coffee, I hope haven’t spit it across the room. I know, I know, that does seem incredible, especially to those of us who can recite the pre flight safety briefing by heart. …

This woman’s experience calls to mind a phenomenon that British aviation writer Steven Barlay calls “negative panic.” In his book, The Final Call, Barlay writes about about a number of accidents where passengers were injured or killed because a very real, fear-induced paralysis turned otherwise capable people helpless. …

A few weeks ago I interviewed Doug Hughes an electrical engineer and air safety investigator for a story I wrote for The New York Times on the use of portable electronic devices on airplanes. I reported what most of us had already suspected. Many passengers do not turn off their personal electronics, even though they are required to do so when the plane is flying below 10 thousand feet. Passengers just decide that’s a rule they don’t need to follow. On the flights on which I am traveling, most passengers don’t seem to think they need to listen to the safety briefing either. Doug’s pearl of wisdom on this subject is this; ”There are four or five elements in air safety and one of the key ones is the passenger.”…

It’s a provocative statement — love the passenger or hate the passenger, airlines and regulators don’t seem to want to partner with the passenger. They are more comfortable telling us to sit down and behave, when with just a little bit more explanation, we might just get the “why” behind all those rules. And passengers need to tune in when a century of lessons-learned is distilled into a few minute summation of “what-ifs”.…

One thing’s for certain – there are 99 passengers in Australia who know now what they might not have known before flight 670. An airplane is equipped with oxygen masks because sometimes they will be needed. When they are, its a good idea to know how to use them. …

“TERRIFIED PASSENGERS!” “MID AIR DRAMA!” these are the kinds of phrases lavishly attached to the newspaper stories about the decompression on Qantas flight 670 on Tuesday. The Boeing 737 traveling from Adelaide to Melbourne was forced to make a rapid descent after losing cabin pressure at cruise altitude … …

Regular readers of Flying Lessons may have discerned a theme: what aviation knows about how to improve human performance can and should be applied to a host of other endeavors. My trip to the Fairway supermarket in Stamford, Connecticut yesterday made … …

Regular readers of Flying Lessons may have discerned a theme: what aviation knows about how to improve human performance can and should be applied to a host of other endeavors. My trip to the Fairway supermarket in Stamford, Connecticut yesterday made me realize that this remarkable grocery store can teach something to the airline industry … …

FAA tests effect of lasers on pilots on a 737 simulatorTechnology givith and technology taketh away, that’s the only way to look at today’s aviation news coming just a day after my story in The New York Times – now reverberating around the globe (… …

FAA tests effect of lasers on pilots on a 737 simulatorTechnology givith and technology taketh away, that’s the only way to look at today’s aviation news coming just a day after my story in The New York Times – now reverberating around the globe (and even plagiarized in London’s Mail for a day but that’s another story) – that personal electronic devices can interfere with cockpit instruments … …

Gadget firmly in hand at 30,000 feet Well in all my years writing for The New York Times, I’ve never found my email inbox filled with so many disgruntled reader comments first thing in the morning. One reader claimed to be “dismayed” by my story … …

Gadget firmly in hand at 30,000 feet Well in all my years writing for The New York Times, I’ve never found my email inbox filled with so many disgruntled reader comments first thing in the morning. One reader claimed to be “dismayed” by my story suggesting that use of portable electronic devices on airplanes could be a safety hazard … …